Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Congress is confronting a Y2K-like mess of its own making, two years after voting to start daylight-saving time (DST) three weeks early — the change goes into effect March 11 and Hill staffers are scrambling.

Everytime Congress messes with stuff it causes other problems. They are worried about their own problems this creates, but what about the rest of us.

Congressional technology officials are hurriedly reprogramming computers, cell phones, landlines and BlackBerrys to spring forward one hour on March 11 and fall back on Nov. 4.

Have you downloaded the latest fixes for your computer (if you let Windows update itself it should have already applied them).

“People were not aware of the implications this would have as much as they were aware of Y2K,” the director of technology on the House Administration Committee, Sterling Spriggs, said, referring to fears that computers would be unable to read dates containing the year 2000. DST’s early start won’t shut down computer systems, but it could lead to scheduling headaches.